Stanza xl. line 5.

Actium and Trafalgar need no further mention. The battle of Lepanto
[October 7, 1571], equally bloody and considerable, but less known, was
fought in the Gulf of Patras. Here the author of Don Quixote lost his
left hand.

["His [Cervantes'] galley the _Marquesa_, was in the thick of the fight,
and before it was over he had received three gun-shot wounds, two in the
breast and one on the left hand or arm." In consequence of his wound "he
was seven months in hospital before he was discharged. He came out with
his left hand permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as
Mercury told him in the 'Viaje del Parnase,' for the greater glory of
the right."--_Don Quixote_, A Translation by John Ormsby, 1885,
_Introduction_, i. 13.]

14.

And hailed the last resort of fruitless love.
Stanza xli. line 3.

Leucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho
is said to have thrown herself.

[Strabo (lib. x. cap. 2, ed. Paris, 1853, p. 388) gives Menander as an
authority for the legend that Sappho was the first to take the "Lover's
Leap" from the promontory of Leucate. Writers, he adds, better versed in
antiquities [Greek: a)rchaiologiko/teroi], prefer the claims of one
Cephalus. Another legend, which he gives as a fact, perhaps gave birth
to the later and more poetical fiction. The Leucadians, he says, once a
year, on Apollo's day, were wont to hurl a criminal from the rock into
the sea by way of expiation and propitiation. Birds of all kinds were
attached to the victim to break his fall, and, if he reached the sea
uninjured, there was a fleet of little boats ready to carry him to other
shores. It is possible that dim memories of human sacrifice lingered in
the islands, that in course of time victims were transformed into
"lovers," and it is certain that poets and commentators, "prone to lie,"
are responsible for names and incidents.]

15.

Many a Roman chief and Asian King.
Stanza xlv. line 4.

It is said, that on the day previous to the battle of Actium, Antony had
thirteen kings at his levee.

[Plutarch, in his _Antonius_, gives the names of "six auxiliary kings
who fought under his banners," and mentions six other kings who did not
attend in person but sent supplies. Shakespeare (_